Third Bar
by TangledUpLies
Summary: It cannot be their end.


Hello! I want to first say thank you to all those amazing people who reviewed, favorited and even alerted _Parachute_. That meant the world to me! I know I _seriously_ need to put up a second chapter for that, but I hope y'all can be a bit more patient. I have the chapter thought out and written a little, but I've been having trouble with putting the pictures in my head into words, which is so typical of me. And then I got a little sidetracked because I wanted to write a little piece that dealt with Emily leaving, which I did manage two thirds of. I had been really happy with what I had written, but then my confidence for that and my writing in general got completely shot and burned that I couldn't finish it and stopped writing for a bit. Plus my classes have been torturous, which adds to my frustration, so I've been in a complete rut. Then watching the latest episodes and getting absolutely no scenes between Hotch and Emily had me raging and giving me absolutely no motivation to just start. She has a wonderful parting scene with each of the important team members (the one she had with Garcia made me completely bawl, ngl), but she doesn't have one with him. Even if I didn't ship these two people together, it still feels like a major slap to a fan who expects her to have something with _everyone_ who has been part of her life. This show is seriously torturing me. I'm trying my best to stay positive because if anyone has seen the promo, Hotch's line had me actually squeeing, lol. As if maybe he will be the last person she will see if she survives her storyline and goes into hiding or my shipper heart hopes to believe she can't say goodbye to him because it just pains her too much, hence, no final goodbye (yet). I'm trying not to get my hopes up because that only leads to a major disappointment for me.

Thus it leads to this. A product of my up above never ending problems, listening to my iPod on the train and shoving everything jumbling in my head together, which might make the read feel rather choppy. I'm not going to lie, but I had to force myself to just completing this to try getting out of this hole I'm in. So I don't have high expectations for this piece because forcing myself to do something usually don't produce very good results and because I feel like something is missing between the characters (besides the scenes) and of course, my writing. To the people who normally read my stories, you will be able to tell this is meh. Yes, there is _really_ a lack of dialogue because I need to sharpen my skill for that so much as well as a little note to point out that tenses change because of little shifts from the present to the past incase people get confused or think I have forgotten how to write the English language too. Icky mistakes left behind are my fault, so sorry because this has been almost mind boggling for me to read over and over again, lol. And last of all, there's a little of my interpretation of what went on between Emily and Doyle. Obviously the episode has not aired, so I can be just completely wrong about all the speculating I am doing. But from what I've seen of their behavior toward one another, what I wrote is simply my opinion and I'm not expecting anyone to see it the way I do. Yet if it turns out to be true, I don't knock Emily. I think it makes her even more complicated and to me, more human and I would never ever love her any less. She's simply too amazing in my eyes. I believe I covered what I needed to say and I have to stop rambling, so if anyone makes it through to the last word, please be dolls and leave a review. Honesty is the best policy, so comments, thoughts, questions and suggestions even, are _greatly _appreciated when you have a moment to spare. Thanks! =]

Oh! And final thing I swear, but yay! for Paget and her new pilot. Whatever her outcome it'll be in September, she deserves the best!

* * *

It's a Saturday.

The sunlight beams through the open shades of the early morning. There is an aroma of rich hazelnut with a hint of vanilla coffee filling the small kitchen. The only sounds heard are crinkling pages every six minutes and short sips every three minutes with the occasional opening and closing of doors from out in the halls every ten minutes.

And at the breakfast table when it's light out and the dinner table when it's dark out, Emily Prentiss sits Indian style.

Wearing nothing but a white dress shirt three sizes too big for her and the black lace that had been pull down those crossing long legs of hers when it was one in the morning, she sits quietly at the breakfast table surrounded by the few toy cars and homemade figurines scattering about. Her elbows are up. Her head is lowered. Her shoulder length dark locks are tucked behind her ears. And in between those sounds of papers and sips and doors, all her concentration is on the tiny printed words before her.

It feels like many other Saturday mornings she manages enjoy when she's not working.

Coffee by her side, the paper open before her and the peace surrounding her, it's always the same.

But there is a difference.

The pouring of the dark liquid into the bright yellow mug that is placed beside her cuts the silence.

"Thank you."

Her gratitude comes out a soft sweet murmur because she's too focused on what she's reading.

And standing over her; Aaron Hotchner smiles.

Even if she's not looking up, he smiles because this current sight of her lost in the printed articles about the world wearing the shirt she pushed off his body always tugs his heart and makes the corners of his mouth twitch up.

That _is_ the difference.

His presence.

Because where she is, isn't her home.

It's his.

She sits in his small kitchen at his table surrounded by the toys that belong to his little boy. The crinkling of the paper is his, delivered to his apartment under his name. The bright yellow mug that contains that dark liquid she drinks out of belongs to him. And the sound of the doors opening and closing are coming from outside his halls.

Ten months and counting it has been of them.

Of this though, the Saturdays morning where she sits in his kitchen, touching his things, using this yellow mug that has become hers every time she stays over until the morning rays, hearing the sounds he hears constantly, he can count on both hands.

And it's a good thing.

He doesn't look at it any other than a good thing he hopes to have more and more of.

Hotch refills his own white mug and places the freshly brew pot of rich hazelnut with a hint of vanilla coffee down on the table before taking the seat at the head of the table. Instantly almost, without ever looking up or to her left, Emily finds his hand. Their fingers intertwine just slightly as her other hand flips the page of the newspaper. He merely grins and picks up the sections she has finished in the past forty three minutes.

Lifting up the white mug up to his lips, he takes a slow sip of the delicious blend.

Because of her, he drinks it too now.

But it's only on the Saturday mornings with her presence in his home. Hotch has this aromatic dark liquid that she must have every Saturday if she's not working only with her. And every time when she's there beside him at his place early on these days and he makes this beverage for her to share before she leaves to go home and he picks up Jack to have their fun fill weekends, he thinks about that first Saturday.

That first Saturday that brings them to their current moment. That first Saturday that perhaps made her realize that what they had been doing, what they had been becoming was something real. That first Saturday where he became certain that learning something and everything about her, regardless of how big and serious or small and frivolous; the pieces of information would be held close to his heart.

The second Friday night eight months ago had been her first time staying at his place. Emily had never done it before. Whenever they could be together, it had been always here and there in this city and that state. Twice it had been at her place because when he found the time to take her to dinner, she invited him even if he had informed her he couldn't stay for long. But at his place, he had Jack. He had his little boy that now holds a piece of her heart with his shy smiles and sweet giggles now. So it had taken a little while longer before she got near his place because it had been still too early to let anyone know.

They were one another's secret.

After that first night in state where the peaches grew too much, they decided without a single word uttered between them that this, them, what they were doing, what they wanted had to be kept quiet for as long as possible because it wasn't supposed to happen.

Wanting one another, needing one another, feeling one another when it was dark and just the two of them, it wasn't supposed to happen.

Yet it had. It does.

And once they had returned home that second Friday night eight months ago, sixteen minutes before it turned midnight, Emily had decided to go home with him. There had been barely any words spoken between them when she had stood next to him. She had simply looked at him, her eyes lingering with want and exhaustion, a combination he still sees when they are very close together, and Hotch had nodded tersely and slightly in case anyone would see. So when everyone else had left, gone until Monday morning would roll around, she had climbed into her car and followed him home.

It took hardly a minute after he had opened his apartment door before she had crashed her lips to his.

Even if it had been two months and they were counting like teenagers, each ticking minute, every passing day, Emily had found herself wanting, needing him more and more. The case had been long. She never went into his room, and neither could he. Despite the tiredness of her body and mind, she had just wanted, needed to feel him on her, in her that night.

"I've missed you."

And that had been the simplest explanation she had manage to sigh against his lips when he pushed into her for the first time in eleven days, remaining perfectly motionless, relishing the feel of being one again.

But when she had woken up the next morning eleven minutes before nine with his side of the bed empty and a little warm as the echoes of water running and something banging against a countertop, Emily had realized that maybe she hadn't thought it through, going home with him.

She quickly found his light blue dress shirt on the floor and donned it with the two middle buttons securely in place. And quietly she had treaded barefoot on his cold wood floors, the same path she fumbled down with him when it was forty six minutes past midnight. There Hotch had stood with his back to her unknown of presence until she had gently cleared her throat and he had spun around instantly.

"Hey."

His eyes had instantly began soaking the picture before him.

"Hey."

She had stood there bright eyes and a glowing fresh face with pale pink lips contrasting her porcelain skin and slightly disheveled hair in his shirt showing off her naked long legs that had been wrapped around him last night.

And for a moment they had stood motionless.

That had been another first for them. Standing so close to each other, seeing one another like this without an interruption, without the fear of someone knocking on the door because all those nights that had occurred here and there in this city and that state always had one another leaving when it was too early because no one was to see them, it had been new and a touch awkward.

Emily took the few steps forward until she had stood next to him. She leaned partially on the countertop and tucked a stand of loose her behind her ear. Their gazes connected while a shy tender beam graced her lips.

"Would you like some coffee?"

And that was when she had looked down, noticing the task he had been doing.

For a minute she hadn't answered him. Staring at the ground brown beans he had been scooping into the coffee machine, Hotch had watched while she bit her lips just lightly before nodding slowly. "Yeah… I'd love some."

Then he had offered her juice and milk, wondering in the back of his mind what had change in the span of seventy three seconds.

"It's fine…" She had grinned softly at him.

But when Emily had tried to turn around, proceeding back to his bedroom hoping that he would follow her once he got the coffee machine to starting brewing their morning drink and ignore the last two minutes, he had stopped her before she could take a first step away from him. He had her fully against on the counter top within moments, the edge of it digging just a little into the small of her back as he had set the spoon down. For a brief second, he had begun speculating that maybe it was regret, spending the night at his place.

"What?" The tiniest drop of nervousness she had caught.

Hotch stared at her then, his eyes gentle yet intense in the early morning sunlight. Even when he wasn't working, even if he wasn't demanding things to be done accordingly and interrogating the suspects, he still used that intense stare of his. And each time he had used that on her, she had felt the blood rushing to her pale cheeks whilst her heart would skip two beats. They were always full of emotion. Care for the victims, purpose for the job, and desire for her, what he felt she had realized would be conveyed in his eyes. And at the minute as he had stared down at her, while her cheeks had grown too warm too fast, she had seen the worry.

Her heartstrings had tugged some.

"It's Saturday…"

His forehead furrowed because he had been well aware of the day.

"I have a routine… on Saturdays… when I'm home…" Her voice trailed off, but the curious stare he had directed at her, into her had encouraged for more information.

If it would continue, if this wasn't the only Saturday morning she found herself walking barefoot into his kitchen in his clothes, he would be finding out eventually, Emily had thought to herself.

So then she had tilted her head the few degrees to the left as her hands rose up and back to clutch the countertop. "I always… _only_… drink… this one kind of blend… hazelnut with a hint of vanilla… and read the paper for an hour… or two sometimes... in the quiet…"

Her cheeks she had felt immediately burning with her statement. Under his direct gaze, revealing the routine that she did always whenever she had found the Saturday at home, she felt stupid and absurd, the problem she was making for him and for herself.

Yet all Hotch had done was let the soft curl of his lips to form before her, and the ridiculousness in her disappear just the tiniest ounce.

"Why?"

Emily had shrugged, a timid smile breaking out at his inquiry as her fingers fidgeted with imaginary strand around her eyes and the buttons of his shirt. "I don't know… it's … normal… something that's stable… in my life… on a Saturday morning…" That would guarantee her a good, great day, even if all she planned would be cleaning her apartment and taking naps in the afternoon, it would be the start of a good, great day. But she kept mum on that because he had laughed then, a warm and deep laugh that formed from the pit of his stomach.

This was a side of him she got when no one else was around. In the last two months, the side that had relaxed and perhaps a little carefree once he wasn't searching for the evil and the monsters in the world, she couldn't help but relish and love.

She had raised her eyebrow at him then, that timid smile widening while she spoke playfully. "You know, I'm _sure_ you have some quirks… something odd you have to do too that no one knows about-"

He had cut her off though, his lips gently brushing against hers. She bit quickly at his bottom lip before he pulled away.

"Do you still want coffee?"

So for that Saturday, she broke routine, sharing the coffee he kept in the house for _everyday_ of the week for thirty eight minutes reading the paper until she had to leave and he had to pick up Jack from his cousins.

And two weeks later, Hotch had surprised her. She had stayed over again for the Friday night after a case. On the Saturday morning when she had woken and he had been missing in bed just like last time, Emily had tipped toe down the hall similar to that first time she had spent the night in his clothes and discovered him making coffee again.

Yet it hadn't been his coffee.

It had been hers.

The rich hazelnut with a hint of vanilla blend she had to have if she was in the state she called home on Saturday mornings, he brought for her. Just incase she would ever there at that time on that day, he had murmured to her. And for eighteen minutes while they had waited for the coffee he gotten specifically for her to brew and another eight minutes because she hadn't been done with him, Emily had thanked him long and slow twice on his kitchen floor.

"Look at this."

Her quiet words cause him to turn to her, knocking him out of his thoughts as she pulls out a page of the paper she has been reading with a bright grin on her face and rises to stand in front and beside him. Sitting slightly on the edge of the table, she places the page in front of his curious eyes.

He's silent for a minute, reading over the colorful advertisement filled with big words and gazing over the pictures. It takes him a moment to connect the reasons she shows him this, and when he looks up, the shine in her eyes is too apparent.

A curve of his lips forms as he arches an eyebrow. "You want to do _this_?"

Her face is radiant.

Even after ten months and counting, she still finds little ways to surprise him.

"Yes, I want to do _that."_

...

A date, she had declared it.

It was a date when he had made it official.

And once seven had rolled around on Sunday the following night, Hotch had asked the sweet and of course, background checked sixty four year old grandmother from next door to watch Jack for just three and a half hours because he hadn't want to bother Jessica for the night. He kissed his son on the head three times and hugged him twice because he had asked excitedly if he was going to fight the monsters with Emily, Daddy's pretty friend who had the black cat he called her once in a while when she wasn't around. He had responded with a laughing maybe while hugging him tightly again before leaving. Down the same streets he had drove so many others times when he picked her up and dropped her off and up the stairs he had walked to the fourth floor and through the dim hall until he reached her door. With a three light knocks, he had heard the heels clicking across her floors. In seconds, the chain of the door had unhooked and the locks turned before the knob twisted to the right as she pulled the door back.

"You look handsome, Unit Chief." She had grin teasingly, tugging gently on the lapel of his charcoal grey suit jacket.

But before Hotch had managed to speak, Emily in a sleeveless Persian blue dress with a low scoop neckline that stopped right above the black lace bra underneath that hugged her every curve and ended an inch above her knees had done a small twirl for him in those tall black heels that he loved on her seeking for his approval.

He had chuckled and arched his eyebrows before taking the three steps forward into her home to press his mouth to hers all the while Sergio greeted him, nuzzling into his left shoe.

"And you look beautiful," he had whispered against her lips.

Because like always and each day he saw her whether it was at the office where they worked close side by side, whether it was when he stood in front of her door ready to take her out, whether it was when she straddled him to tease him in more ways than he could expect or whether it was when he covered her slender and delicate body as every part of him and her connected physically and emotionally, Hotch believed she looked beautiful.

And the giggle that had escaped from her plump red lips and rang through his ears and tugged his heartstrings then matches the one that flows through his ears currently.

He doesn't know what it is about her. She makes him feel a little younger because he's nearly half a century old, just six years off now. She makes him beam because her own warm smiles and sweet laughs are too infectious. Apart from Jack, he didn't know if it would ever be possible again, having someone in his life that would do that to him with all he feels and all he sees more and more each passing day.

But Emily had done it.

She's doing it, making him smile a little too much, laugh a bit more and making him contemplate that the risk to be with one another, what they are, what they have grown into in ten months could be something more than he could have imagined possible and maybe deserved for the simple reason that sometimes he believes she might be too good for him.

"I don't deserve you."

The simple statement had slipped from his lips accidentally one night in Portland after.

With her naked long legs draped across his thighs and his large hands stroking those very limps underneath the comforters they had laid on the same pillow, still relishing their new enjoyment of the closeness of their forms. He had been staring up at the ceiling in the dim lit room thinking about their last hour, their last almost five months. Her head had been alongside his and gently turned down; the lips he had spent the last sixty minutes sucking and tasting centimeters away from his skin whilst her right hand had rest just above his heart. In the comfortable silence they had stayed, and after some time, Hotch had heard her deep steady breathing and felt them grazing his skin. Emily had fallen asleep, he had been convinced.

He had remained awake though. For how long he hadn't known because he hadn't bother checking the time. All he had known, all he remembers now had been that in his room that night with the hot air seeping in through the smallest crack of his window was that her being in his bed, having her beside him, on him had been too good a thing. One he had considered too surreal to understand, to accept. The failure of his marriage, the guilt he continued to feel over the promise he had broken to Haley and doubts of whether he could ever be a good enough father for his son had been pounding in his head.

That had been when those words slipped from his lips, mixing with her soft breathing in the room.

Broken and pathetic his words had sounded to him.

Back into the reality of his moment Hotch had found himself again, the four words echoing in his brain as his graze continued against her soft skin. He didn't deserve this or her. And a while later when he had inhaled sharply and prepared to move the five inches over without disturbing her to shut the lamp off, her gentle voice had startled him greatly.

"What you think about yourself…"

Underneath her touch, his heartbeat had quickened.

Slowly Emily had moved her head up. He had twisted his stare cautiously to her, wondering what he would see, what she would say to him, he had been met by her watery eyes.

"I think about myself… I don't deserve you."

Regardless of what he told himself he was, would never be, those very words he had spoken had never crossed her mind. Not once since the nearly five months ago she had found herself falling into him, into them. The mistakes he had made, the scars that covered him, that jaded him hadn't mattered to her because she had her own. Mistakes she never told him about, scars she couldn't ever bear to show him, she was positive, still is, that it was the other way around.

It had to be.

A miniscule sad smile had formed momentarily before him soon enough. Her watery eyes increased. The moving stroke he had on her thigh stopped. For a moment then with the seconds changing too slowly, they had discovered themselves in a staring contest. Emily had wanted him to say something. Her heart throbbed inside of her. But all Hotch had done was closed the inch and a half distance between their lips. Into his mouth she had released the faintest whimper, and for the rest of the night they had hardly slept.

He watches the sweet grin transform her face, brighter than the lights in the room while her feet move steadily and his feet move awkwardly, he thinks that if they keep counting, if he gets another ten months and another after that with her, this, them, will be something he knows he doesn't ever want to let go of. Even if she wants to do this together, salsa dance, Hotch knows it's something he can't ever let go.

Her breaths dance along his lips when she pulls him closer.

Emily is certain it's a sight to see the man who looks too serious with his dark colored suits and perfectly knotted silk ties and the clench jaw when the sun is out to be salsa dancing, grinning and laughing when the moon is out.

He feels ridiculous, she is well aware of. But he had said yes to her when she told him this was what she wanted to do upon a simple and colorful ad in the newspaper. And once she had batted her eyelashes and sat firmly on his breakfast table, careful not to knock over their mugs of rich hazelnut with a hint of vanilla coffee and allowed her feet to touch his strong thighs and graze him just lightly, he had called her a tease with a grin and agreed a minute later.

It's all because of her. It's all for her.

When he stares at her at work for two seconds too long, touches her slowly with his large hands, mouth and even his tongue when they lay together or kisses her quickly one extra time before she leaves him because she needs to make sure that even if they have turned into something in ten months, she doesn't stay too long because she's still Daddy's pretty friend with the black cat, Emily believes that everything in her world might be too good to be true.

He is; they are too good to be true.

So all she does; wish to do is to savor it. Savor him; savor them, savor the little heart thumping moments and lock them away in the corner of her brain because a part of her thinks that anything can still happen. Something can slip away any second. He can, she can, they can, so all she does is do her best to enjoy as many moments with him whenever.

Thus for two hours, Emily savors every step, every feeling she gets when their hands are joined together, and every time he chuckles with the lines forming at the corner of his eyes and the indentations on his face emerging ever so slightly.

And when it's twenty seven minutes to ten and they are walking to his car hands together and fingers tightly intertwining. Hotch believes that even if he had trouble moving his feet and watched and listened as she was in fits of giggles, he knows that he can't forget the night.

"Do your feet hurt?" The question into his ear is sugary. He turns and gazes down at her while she props up the collars of her black coat.

"No, but I think I'll be getting there." Her titter quickly follows his last word.

Her hand tightens around his as his thumb brushes over her knuckles. "But you had fun? Didn't you? And if you didn't, you-"

"I had fun."

Seeing her smile, hearing her laugh had made it fun. He's certain it can make anything fun.

"Good."

Emily stops their steps momentarily to lean up to pucker her lips to his cheek, warm regardless of the light winds sweeping by.

"That's good because we're going to have to do this again."

With that, Hotch laughs heartily and her heartstrings are pulled on immensely because she loves that sound from him. It's calming and each time he laughs, she doesn't doubt that she falls a little harder. In seconds he lets go of her hand to wrap his arm around her tiny waist.

"I _can't_ wait."

There is the drop of sarcasm that she catches without delay. Yet all she can do is let out an amused chuckle and tilt back just an inch to stare up at him.

"Thank you."

It's soft and sweet, just like the ones she gives him when she hears him pour her the rich hazelnut with a hint of vanilla coffee into the yellow mug, but a little unexpected because doing things like this with her, he doesn't ever want, ever need to be thanked. Her stare stays on him for a moment longer until he nods just slightly and sets a light kiss on her temple.

The smell of her jasmine scented shampoo delights his nose and seeps into the organ on the left side of his chest underneath his bones.

And then Emily looks down, leaning her body a little into him to continue their journey to his car.

Just for those beams on her face, her charming laughter swirling around his brain still and miniscule moments they have once their night is over, Hotch honestly can't wait.

...

Nine days ago they had gone salsa dancing.

They had gone because of her whim seeing that colorful and exciting advertisement in the newspaper on a Saturday morning at his place over the rich hazelnut with a hint of vanilla blend. He had picked her up like how he always did on Sunday. He had told her she looked beautiful in her Persian blue dress, his words quiet for her ears to hear only. For two hours then they had moved their feet and sway their hips as their hands held onto one another's. Afterwards when they had finished, they walked those five blocks to his car hand in hand with fingers lacing into each other's just like they would always be while she had inquired if his feet hurt. He had said no, but it would eventually he added. She had laughed and asked for the truth. She wanted to know if he had fun, but she couldn't even finish her last sentence because he had told her he did. He had fun, and with a light press of her red lips to his warm cheek despite the winds they had felt, she had informed him that they were to do it again, salsa dance. He had turned playfully sarcastic, informing her he couldn't wait. And when he had dropped his lips to her hair, she had heard his deep inhale.

In New York three months ago he had buried his nose into her hair after. And settled in his strong arms, Hotch had murmured to her that he loved it, the flowery scent that surrounds her and sticks to his clothes and sinks into his skin sometimes. Emily had informed him it was the scent of jasmine on her that he was enjoying before she turned in his arms and seized his lips in hers once more in the city that never slept.

Hard face and intense stare, that man is a romantic underneath it all.

Her heart aches.

Emily wills her brain to go back to nine days ago.

They had driven home in silence then. It was comfort like so many other times they had been together in the silence. And when he had parked his car and opened the door for her because he was always the gentleman, and they walked up the four flights of stairs hand in hand, she had wanted nothing more than to invite him inside. But she knew she couldn't. He had to head home. They had work tomorrow morning. She would see him then. So she had tipped on her toes just a little because those black heels had given her a little more height and caught his lips in hers. An arm had wrapped around her waist as the other cradled the back of her neck. Her arms slithered under his open suit jacket, gripping the back of his crisp dark blue shirt. For a long while, their bodies had stayed frozen in one another's arm, the only things moving had been their tongues in each other's mouths, relishing that wonderful taste they couldn't ever get enough of, before she pulled back because she had needed oxygen for her lungs. A minute had passed before she had leaned up and into him and gave him one last parting peck before she dropped her arms from around him to open her door. And once she had pushed her door wide for just her entrance and had begun taking one step and another backwards in as he prepared to turn around to make his way home, she had whispered those words she found herself still blushing to when they left her lips for past two months.

"I love you."

In Boston had been the first time those words had been whispered. He had been thinking about Foyet, she had learned a week after, thinking about all the people he had murdered, the battle he had lost. When Emily had found him sitting up by her window; she had gotten up out of the bed with the messy sheets. Without a word she had intertwined their hands and for a long time, they had sat in utter silence as her head had lain on his shoulder. And once the digital numbers on the hotel nightstand had changed to four in the morning, Hotch had turned his head, and she had looked up.

"I love you."

Nothing had been fancy about his declaration, but with him, she never wanted anything of that, like that.

Just him and her, and after six minutes of gaping at him with her mouth partially ajar as her heart and world stopped, Emily had closed her mouth, felt her heart functioning again and her world started spinning once more, she had whispered it right back.

They had gone salsa dancing.

That was what happened nine days ago.

Because as she sits in the silent darkness, on the chair that used to be so comfortable, facing the door, anticipating the fall of the vase and the breaking of those perfume bottles that sit on top of the windows in her room, waiting for someone to surprise her as her hand holds firmly to the cold metal in her hand with her index finger right behind the trigger, that is all she can remember.

That is all she can think of.

Nine days ago with those moments stringed along.

Emily feels her eyes burning. From her tiredness because she wants to desperately sleep, from the memory embedded in her she cannot forget because her vision of that front door is getting a little too blurry to see, she's unsure.

All she knows is that they haven't closed in so long.

The wonderful night they had nine days ago and all the little milestones that go along she begins to replay like a movie reel in her brain once again.

Her head hurts.

She wants nothing more than to go back to nine days ago.

...

Hotch can tell when something is bothering her.

She gets a little quiet. She picks her nails a little too much. The minuscule sparks in her dark eyes dim even under bright lights. The smile she will give to him and to others never reach her eyes when she's asked if she's alright. And she stares aimlessly out the window never moving a muscle for a long while.

That is how he can tell something is bothering her.

In those times when he can tell something is bothering her, he doesn't press her. He simply pulls her to him and whispers her name into her ear once because she has told him her name off his lips sounds beautiful. Whether on the couch or in his bed or hers, Hotch holds her close as Emily curls her long legs and nuzzles her head into the curve of his neck. The scent of her jasmine shampoo then would tickle his nose while his hand strokes the gentle circles on her arm or her thigh or wherever it travels to. And then she will speak, quietly telling him what's bothering her, what's in her head that she can't seem to escape from, and they will talk. For eighty seconds or eighty minutes, she will spill out the problems pounding in her head and the emotions blending in her heart until she feels better, even if it's only a bit.

That is how he helps her; that is how it is when something is bothering her.

And this time he can tell something is bothering her.

But there is something more.

Emily has been a little too quiet. She has been picking her nails more than a little too much. The minuscule sparks that used to dim has disappeared completely. The smile she has been offering him and them when asked if everything is alright has stopped appearing.

Then last week in Charlotte, Hotch had found her staring out the window aimlessly; the glassiness of her eyes apparent from the sides. And when he had gone to pull her close and say her name just once into her ear, she never said a word to him. Emily never told him what was crossing her mind and weighing on her heart. She had simply fallen asleep against him two minutes after his arms had gone around her.

And this second time in Boise as she sits by his window with the same glassiness in her eyes he can't ignore, he prepares himself to do the same thing he has done for ten months, almost eleven months now.

But Emily flinches back, almost jumps up at the tender contact he places on the small of her back.

She _never_ does that.

That is when she fully turns around, her hands gripping hard onto her seat.

"It's just me."

There is no delay to his words. But all Hotch can see are her watery pupils shaking staring directly at him while she takes deep breaths to calm herself, realizing it's _only_ him and no one else, he's a bit certain it is something more. She remains silent a few minutes longer until she shakes her head, a nervous chuckle cutting the quiet room.

"Yeah… yeah… you just scared me… that's all…"

Like that she gives him a smile, material to prove to him that what she speaks of is the truth.

Yet it's unconvincing because he knows her smiles. The happy one, the excited one, the sad one and the fake one she gives occasionally to be polite, to lie to others that she's alright.

And the one that he's presently facing is just that, a fake one to lie to him that she is alright.

"Emily-"

"I'm tired. Can we just sleep tonight?"

Immediately Emily lowers her head and pushes herself off the couch. Hotch watches intently as she walks to his bed, pulling the heavy covers back and climbing into his bed. And when she crawls to the right side, the side that doesn't face the window, he is more than certain that there is something more.

She always sleeps on the side that faces the window. She likes staring out into the sky if she wakes up in the middle of the night.

For a few minutes, he stares at her back and her slightly bent long legs, wondering what's wrong; thinking about her glassy eyes, and still feeling her body recoil at his touch.

"Aaron…"

That voice he loves to hear say his name, Hotch deems sounds a little sad and almost desperate into his ears. He gets up from the couch and crawls into the bed, settling on the side that she usually occupies. The thick hotel covers he swiftly brings over their bodies to shield them from the cold winter night. And beneath them, his body outlines her as their legs tangle. He pulls her close to him, curling his arms around her waist and resting his hands on her lower abdomen. His fingers fiddle the soft cotton shirt she wears. But then Emily threads her slim fingers through his thick ones, her grip firm as she tugs up their clasped hands.

Her warm breaths are against his skin. And within seconds her soft lips press once and twice and even a third onto the back of his callous hands

One thing he doesn't do is press her when something is bothering her.

But maybe he should start now.

...

There were two things in the world Emily had ever wanted.

The first thing had been a home.

Somewhere she will stay for more than eight months. Somewhere with the familiar streets and people she will be able to recognize from a swift glance at the back of their heads. Somewhere she will be able to walk in and breathe deeply all the while thinking that she never will want or need to be anywhere else.

The second thing had been a family.

She has her mother and her father. She loves them; she will always because in the end they are her parents who had given her her life. For that she loves them and will be eternally grateful.

But from early on, she had known that it had to be more than that. In her dictionary, family meant more than sharing the same name and blood. It would be people she can never get enough of. People she knew she can count on regardless of problems and outcomes. It meant laughs until tears came up into the corner of her eyes, smiles when things turned too bad, and fears and hugs because those small moments can never; will never be forgotten and always be appreciated even after a long time.

And when Emily had come here five years ago, she hadn't expected to find them.

Both of the things she had ever wanted the most.

After all the searching and wandering around the world, she could finally stop and sit and enjoy.

She found the home she always wanted and made it hers. The pictures, the things she used to carry all over with her, she had found a place to put them all. She had the neighbors she could recognize immediately from the back of their heads and the sound of their voices as well. She found the place she would never want, need to leave.

And she had discovered the people she couldn't live without. People that she shared laughs, tears, fears and memories with because what they had become, what they are, is her family.

Even without the same name and the different bloods flowing through their veins, Emily had found them.

Sometimes she wants to throttle Morgan. She wants to shake him and tell him to back off. He gets too protective of her. She's more than capable of taking care of herself. They do have the same job. She does carry her own gun and can kick and shoot anyone just like how he does so. But then she realizes he only cares about her, and growing up with three women, she believes that's all he can do. Protect and watch over. He can only get too protective when he's around them, around her, so though she wants to push him to the side and tell him she's a big girl, that she can handle anything just like he can, deep down she thinks it's sweet because she knows that regardless of what the situation is; he will always have her back.

Reid rambles on and on too much. Even at a simple question, he goes on for twelve minutes with statistics, telling her all the information she doesn't care to know. And on a few occasions when he talks a little too long and a little too much while she tries to finish the large stack of files for the day, she slips him one or three of them once he isn't looking and calls it even. But she loves him. Even if he talks too much and tells her information she doesn't ever need to know and could probably care less about, she doesn't ever want him to change. His brain is what makes her love him. And his charming nature and boyish smiles is what makes her grateful that he is in her life. She hopes he never loses them.

Every so often she saunters into Rossi's office to share a cup of coffee with him. Most of the time, it's for no apparent reason. She simply likes his company. She enjoys the stories he has to tell about his good ole days. Once in a while though; it's because she wants his advice. He tells her wise old sayings she finds herself repeating in her head occasionally. She had told him once, why she liked him, why she would go to his office only to share a cup of coffee with him if she could and talk. It's the simple reason that he reminds her of her grandfather, the man who she would spend summers and winters with whenever it was possible to do so and who told her she could be whatever she wanted. Rossi had deadpanned that she had just made feel twice as old as he already was while she laughed and told him that it was a compliment. Then he had smiled knowingly because she had looked up to her grandfather, and at that moment; she had told him the same thing.

Garcia has the ability to make her smile. Since that first day she had introduced herself, her bubbly personality and big grins have always made her feel better. She loves how she notices when she's feeling gloomy. She would wag her finger and tell her to smile. The world needs those beautiful Emily Prentiss smiles. And immediately she does. Not because they're under false pretenses and not because she hopes that would push the woman back into her lair. Emily flashes her straight pearly whites because regardless of how gloomy she can get, the woman who places those cartoon characters on her files now and then and shows her the photoshopped images of Morgan to remind her to laugh a little has enough positivity to brighten any of her days. All she can see is the good in the people, in the world, and she knows that her positivity, her energy can never be too much. She can never have enough of that from her, and she can never be more thankful.

JJ surprises her. She is a tiny woman, yet she's one of the most headstrong people she knows who takes no hell from anyone. Not even for a second. She misses her alot. She misses those times when she and Garcia would sneak into her office and the three of them would snack on the chocolate she always kept in her bottom left drawer and discuss the office gossip. She doesn't see her enough anymore. The different work schedules have butchered the weekly girls night out she used to have with her and Garcia. But when JJ does see her, see them; whether it's just on a Thursday night as they share drinks and her elbow nudges her ribs towards the men staring at her because no one knows her secret or Sunday afternoon when they go shopping for too long and buy more shoes that she wears only once in a while, she hugs both of them tight for minutes too long and then it's as if ten days hadn't passed since they last seen each other.

In the four months since she had began her training, she has grown fond of Seaver. She realizes that mentoring her, choosing to help her has been one of the best decisions she could have ever done. She's smart, but she has a lot to learn still. She has a lot to prove, and whenever she comes up to her with a question or asks for her opinion, she sees herself again from five years ago. She sees the fear, but most of all, it's determination that stands strong and visible and she believes that she will do just fine. It will take a little time, but she's more than certain she will fit in. She will find her place among them all.

She admires Hotch. His leadership, the focus he has for the job and getting to the top, she doesn't believe there could ever be anyone as good as him to run the bureau one day. He may be the drill sergeant and the lack of sense of humor he has gets daunting at times, but she wouldn't have expected him any other way. A part of her wouldn't have wanted him any other way because that stoic exterior had been perhaps how she had gotten so far. He plays no games, and she had proven to him that she didn't either. She had worked for his trust, worked long and hard to show him that she did, she does belong on the team. And had he not been that man who gave her a small chance with no promises, had she not done more than she was given, taken those few extra steps to show him where her loyalties lied, she knows that maybe she couldn't have grown as an agent. But more than that, as a person because in between all of that and behind the badges they carry, there is him.

Aaron.

He, she hadn't bet on finding, wanting, needing. It hadn't ever crossed her mind, having him and perhaps anyone else weaving into the most intricate parts of her.

Yet he did happen.

What they had built, what they've become is something she cannot describe.

The man who had been scarred; but who had allowed her into his life, into his son's life, had become a stable in her life besides those Saturday morning with mugs of rich hazelnut with a hint of vanilla coffee while reading the paper. She never could have expected it; him in her life; him turning her world around; him putting butterflies in her stomach like a school girl. His laugh, the one he rarely lets out when he has the suit and tie on, his smiles, the ones that form with those dimples on the side of his face she can't resist, and his touches and his kisses that ignite her body, she can't ever get enough of.

And next month will be a year.

A year of overcoming the fear and hesitation of discovering the passion and ultimately love between them. A year where she has felt the rapid beats of his heart when he pushed into her and steady beats when they lay together in the stillness. A year of milestones they've reached with those three little words ultimately whispered in the quiet night.

However in the end, it will be a year they cannot see together, feel together because she can't stay.

As her fingers fiddles the matches covered in gold foil with the stamped four leaf clover while her own haunting and partially sullen face from so many years ago printed on the piece of paper with all the black markings stares back at her and surrounded by the identification cards and the claddagh ring that sits on top of the velvet blue pouch, Emily knows that she can't do it.

Of the past she can never rid of. Of the past they have yet to uncover. Of the man who kills for business and never for pleasure. Of the man they are currently searching for. Of the man who had given her his faith and his love. And of the man who had held the tiniest fracture of her heart once in her life those many moons ago in secret because behind closed doors, the money and the blood, he had been a different man, a wonderful man if she laid everything out.

One hand splays over her stomach.

She can't tell them. She can't tell him.

Her vision turns blurry.

She has been to so many parts of the world. She has seen all the beauty every city has to offer. She has lived here and there and has met more people than she could ever remember.

But nothing compares to what is here.

Nothing compares to what she has seen here. Nothing compares to what she has here. Nothing compares to her home here and the people she has met here because Emily doesn't doubt for a second that no matter what happens and where she will end up going, this city with the people she can't live without will be where her heart lies.

A soft and pathetic and nearly bitter laugh echoes in the room she fears now in the home that she must leave. Just when she has found it, just when she has it in her grasp, the two things she had ever wanted in her life, and more, she has to let it all go.

It's for the best, Emily's certain of.

She can't drag them into it. She can't drag him into it.

Risking them, risking him will never be an option for her.

You protect the people you love.

She loves them. She loves him.

They are everything to her. He is everything to her.

And if it means leaving them, leaving him means saving them, saving him, doing this all on her own, she's willing to do just that.

...

Emily can't sleep.

She hasn't for a while.

When she goes back to the makeshift home she has made for herself and Sergio in the room at the end of the hall on the sixteenth floor of the hotel with the tight security upfront, she doesn't sleep. She stays up watching late night television as her gun sits by her side and the table in the room is moved to the door.

And tonight isn't any different.

Regardless if his arms had been secure around her, the feeling of security and safety she would always find in them, she can't sleep. Not for a minute. So thirteen minutes ago, she had slithered out of those strong arms of his and had wandered the few feet away.

She shouldn't be here.

This she's more than sure of because someone's watching and waiting.

Watching them, but waiting for her because when she least expects it, all his pieces will fall in place.

She will fall in place six feet under.

But she's selfish and stupid.

That's what she calls herself because she wants one more night.

When she had inaudibly asked hours ago with her eyes downcast and her fingers trembling slightly while she had pushed her hair behind her ear, if she could come over, even if it was a Wednesday night and even if Jack was home, Hotch had stared at her for a long moment before slowly nodding his head without a question asked.

He's worried.

The concern is etched into that face she loves and lingering in those eyes that burn through her when he watches her. He's not asking though because she knows what he does. He doesn't press her because she will eventually go to him. That's what she does, that's what they do because when he gets upset as well, when something troubles him and he's quiet and stares out the window while his forehead furrows ever so slightly, she never presses either. All she will do is sit beside him, finding his hand to hold and putting her head on his shoulder. She lets him come to her, and whenever he's ready, whether it is early in the morning or late at night, then they will talk about what is on his mind.

As the silver moon shines bright in the black sky and through his window and Emily stands awake, she's aware what troubles him of lately will not be talked about because it's her.

She is what's on his mind. She is why his forehead furrows ever so slightly, even now in his sleep, something that is rare.

And while she stares ahead, the sounds of his faint breathing into her ears behind the slightly ajar door, the guilt of what she's putting him through stomping on her heart and punching into her head, her touch grazes the soft materials she loves seeing him in.

With the dim bulb above in the tiny space, she can see the hues of black, grays and blues. They are all in order from the darkest to the lightest.

That is his quirk.

It isn't the only blend of coffee on one specific day, but it's something she teases him about every now and then. The arrangement and color coordination, she shouldn't have expected anything less. She sees office. Neat and organized and his closet is no different.

Emily tugs on the sleeve of the white lined dress shirt that currently covers her. Those hang on the left. She loves them. Seeing him in them, wearing them herself, it is one piece of his clothing she deems to be her favorite. Sometimes in the morning after when she needs a shirt to cover herself before meeting him in his kitchen because she has discovered he likes getting out of bed too early, and realizes that one of these shirts she had not discard from his body, she saunters over to his closet simply to pull one out to wear. He laughs every time she does so before he presses his mouth to hers. She loves the scent of the fresh laundry detergent and his faint scent of something spicy remaining on her skin every time she wears them. But mostly though, she loves that she still feels him. Because even presently as she stands awake and alone and he sleeps soundly in bed, Emily feels his arms holding her.

His collection of nearly three dozens suits resides on the right. It amazes her to no end. Regardless of the weather, he wears them and it's rare if he takes off that jacket. And below on the ground, the shoes that accompany those dress shirts and suits he wears daily are lined and polished. She laughs quietly. He has three of the same pair.

Her gaze and feet shift around, and ultimately, like usual, the last items it settles on are toward the silky and woven materials he ties around his neck. In a tiny space before his dress shirts adjacent to the entryway of his closet, all twenty eight of those ties of his are sharing and draped off the wooden hangers.

Dashing.

That's the word she uses to describe him every time she manages to form one right before her hands pulls on the knot.

And solid colors, thin lines, thick stripes, tiny stitching or faint prints, it doesn't matter to her though.

Emily loves him in a tie.

But there is one that she's most fondest of, she will not lie.

One that makes her bite the corner of her lip to contain the beams that nevertheless finds its way of emerging because whenever she sees the firebrick red tie encircling his neck or dangling on the hanger, her mind travels back to that night in the tiny town in Georgia almost one year ago.

The first night she had kissed him.

He had been so close to her. His hands cupping her face as his thumbs brushed her tear stain cheeks. She had debated in her head. She shouldn't do it, they couldn't do it. But the spicy scent of him and his breathing had been prickling her skin too much and for too long. Before she could have stopped herself, she had leaned up, tasting him for the very first time. He had frozen, and all she had thought about was the mistake she had just made. Yet she had been proven wrong because he had kissed her back. Gradually he had kissed her back with force. The hands that cupped her face had tangled into her tresses. She had fisted his dress shirt. And as their bodies staggered back and fell into her bed; they had realized what they had been denying themselves for so long.

The first night he had held her.

His touch on her had been tender. Yet all she felt were his hands molding her, leaving marks she could never rid of, marks she would never want to rid of. And when she had lifted her hips inches up, opening herself for him to see, for him to touch, for him to lick and to kiss, his hands had glided from her thighs and up to her backside. In his hands, she couldn't fall. But right into him, she had fallen.

The first night they had begun.

Slowly and carefully he had slid into her. It had felt right. He had felt _so_ right. In her, on her, he had been an unknown missing puzzle piece that had been a precise fit. As soon as his hips moved down against hers, the sound of their friction bouncing off her hotel room walls, her world had spun and spun. Yet all she had wanted, needed more of, was for him to push deeper and deeper because even through all the spinning, she had still seen his face crystal clear behind her eyelids. And once he had brought her over the brink, feeling her walls contract around him as he grew in her, he had collapsed on her. Their hearts a perfect match in rhythms and beats, she heard. But what she felt, what she had realized was his nose pressed to below the small area below her right ear drawing deeply in to make certain that she had been real.

Her vision begins growing hazy. Emily takes the two baby steps forward. Her arm reaches out and up. She feels her feet digging into his sandy colored carpet. Carefully and gently she pulls that firebrick red tie that brings back so many memories off the hanger. In her grasp, the touch and the smoothness have not changed since that Georgia night she had dug her fingers into it. She steadily lifts the item to the tip of her nose.

It has his something spicy scent.

The quiet sob she doesn't realized forming in her chest escapes unexpectedly. Quickly as it comes out, another tries to break free in a second before she nibbles the inside of her lip. She doesn't realize the door behind her is cautiously pulled back some.

No tears. No crying. She has told herself there will be none. She cannot allow it.

"Emily… what are you doing?"

In the midst of her amble through memory lane seven minutes after three in the early morning, Hotch had stirred. But what had made him open his gaze had been her missing body. Her side had been too cold. Then he had pushed himself up, the thin yellow line of light seeping out from the open crack of his closet door had caught his attention. And as he had ran a hand over his face to rub the sleep away, he had pondered what she was doing in his closet only to recognize that for the last month, he had been pondering everything about her.

Why she wouldn't talk to him because holding her and waiting for her to tell him what was on her mind like what they always had done seemed to stop. His arms she would be in, but herself he had felt gone distant. And twelve days ago in Dallas when he had found her staring out, he slipped behind her and said her name into her ear. She had fallen asleep within minutes again like in Charlotte. An hour later though, she had jumped from out his arms, beads of tiny sweat on her forehead as her chest heaved.

"It's nothing."

That had been her fast answer when he had inquired about it. Immediately away from him she had turned too quickly, avoiding his concern gaze. After that night, he had begun to notice the circles under her eyes. Every passing day he saw her, the darkness of them had increased a bit more. And when he would pull her close those days later and onwards, her body froze for three minutes long before she'd finally lean into him.

Hotch couldn't understand.

He doesn't understand because the sight of her standing in his closet with her head lowered and his tie in her hands as the quiet sob he had heard seconds ago is still ringing in his head has him confused.

When she had asked if she could spend the night, he had been surprised. Given the day, given that she had known Jack was home, her request had startled him. But with what had been occurring, the distance she seemed to be putting between them, Hotch didn't say no. He couldn't. So he had asked Jessica if she could take Jack for the night. His stress expression must have been too evident because she hadn't say no.

And Emily had arrived right after work. She had sat down on his couch quietly soon after their greeting and picked up one of Jack's toy cars of the couch, rolling the wheels on the palm of her hand. He had stood at his doorway, studying her, wondering what tonight had been about, but mostly what had been about her as of late.

"You think we can make some of your cocoa?"

It had been a strange request out of the blue that brought him out of his concerned reflection. But at him she had gazed up with a tender grin ghosting her face, and he had bobbed his slowly. And she had helped him even if she had never been good in the kitchen because he made his cocoa from scratch. Then together they had sat on the couch, her body leaning into him as they watched the news and she stirred in that handful of mini marshmallows she had dropped into her drink. Once she had nearly finished hers and placed that yellow mug beside his white one which he had put down minutes prior, Emily had straddled him before brushing her lips against his, tasting the wonderful mix of each other and chocolate.

"Thanks for the cocoa."

A half smile she offered him while Hotch brushed her bangs from her eyes.

"You okay?"

The curve of her red lips stayed intact. "Yeah… I'm okay."

On the couch she had savored every millimeter of him until he had put his hands underneath her arms to pull her up. She in turn had tugged him behind her then into his room for him to savor every crevice of her core.

Emily doesn't raise her head. Under his focus she doesn't look up at him. "I didn't mean to wake you." He hears the crack of her voice.

One after another, his small footsteps move towards her. And by her side with just an inch between them Hotch is at, but her head she keeps down. He watches her thumb slowly brush the fabric in her hands.

All this time, he has never press her. But with what he has seen, with what he sees, there is no better time. He has no other choice.

"Talk to me."

So he makes it as straightforward and as simple as possible. Three easy words he can say any day of the week to anyone; he finds it almost difficult to say it presently and to her.

But she remains silent for minutes longer.

"Something is wrong. I _know_ something is wrong. Whatever it is, you can tell me." He hesitates momentarily before he puts his hand on the small of her back. She doesn't jump, she doesn't pull away, and a part of him sighs in relief.

Emily takes a shaky breath in. "Do you remember that night… in Georgia?" Those tears she feels forming cannot tumble down. "When you came to check on me… you were wearing this tie." She will not allow them to. "It was midnight… but it was still around your neck… and it had been so hard… to unknot it… you make them so tight…" Her words trail off and are replaced by the quiet chuckle.

"I want to help. But I _can't_. I can't unless you tell me."

She hears the hopeless in his voice and feels her heart ripping. Little by little he slides his hand around, settling it on her flat stomach. He holds her to him. Onto the side of her head, he leans against. His sharp breaths are loud. And by her ear, his lips are.

"Do you remember that night after Louisville?"

His question is hardly audible, but of the closeness of them Emily cannot ignore it and hears it too perfectly. She doesn't know where this will go. But she does know what he might be thinking, what he wants to say, will be something she can't hear, doesn't want to hear.

"You have _me_… you're not alone."

Immediately she remembers those unspoken words she had given to him that night. The night she had been so angry with his lack of responsibility and more or less, stupidity. But most of all she had been so afraid of losing him all over again. The position he put himself _and_ her in, the panic he had set into her, she couldn't handle. And when he had found himself walking the same path as Darrin Call, she couldn't have him imagining that.

"He has Tommy. He's not alone."

Where they had stood then, apart and in denial with what had been building between them for months, Emily couldn't tell him that. She couldn't tell him that knowing what he had been going through and the rules that wouldn't allow those words to be uttered, she had done her best. She had given all she felt, all he had needed to feel in between the lines.

And the directness of those words at the moment she doesn't see coming at all

When he holds her until she tells him what's bothering her and when she puts her head on his shoulder and takes his hand in hers and waits for him to talk, she's certain now that all she couldn't say that night and all he has just told her, he doesn't ever forget, doesn't ever let go because they mean something to him. And in his arms presently, knowing that this, them will not be for much longer because she can never risk them, Emily feels her heart breaking in one million and one little pieces. She wants to scream with the tears rolling down her cheeks and turn in his arms, revealing to him everything for him to tell her it will be okay. Every detail she has tried to buried, every secret she has kept from him, everything that might make him regret her because keeping it in her, compartmentalizing those thoughts and her increasing fear, she cannot cope with any longer.

But she doesn't.

She doesn't scream. She bites down on her lips, and wonders if they'll start bleeding. She doesn't let the tears descend. She blinks her eyes rapidly. She doesn't turn in his arms to tell him all he has yet to learn about her. She thinks it'll hurt more than anything if he hates her, regrets them.

Her heart though, she still feels breaking. Bit by bit, the cracks are increasing; the jagged and sharp fractures are falling down.

So instead, Emily sucks in a deep inhale and exhales steadily, waiting for heartbeat to calm. One hand still holding that firebrick red tie, her other covers his touch on her stomach as she twists her head the few degrees to press her forehead to his cheek.

"I know." Her words come out strained and breathless. "I know... I know..."

Unhurriedly she turns in his arms.

Hotch sees the tears in her eyes.

"_Talk to me."_

Yet what she sees is desperation in his and she knows that his heart is breaking along with hers.

And it's all because of her.

Emily offers him a watery smile and grazes his cheeks with the back of her hand.

"I'm okay… I promise you that I'm okay… please take my word for it..." She shakes her head. "I'm okay… I won't lie to you…"

When she tells him this, she does exactly the opposite.

She hates herself for those last five words, but she knows she has no other choice. His hands fist the back of the dress shirt she wears as he presses her body to his. Her bare feet that had been digging into his sandy colored carpet previously now touches his and covers his toes. Lowering his head, Hotch rests his forehead on hers and sighs nearly helplessly.

For a few minutes, they stand frozen in the tiny space listening to one another's breathing. But Emily pulls back first, another smile less watery and perhaps a bit playful and very small as she brings the item that is still in her hands up.

"Can I keep it?"

Her attention turns downcast to the tie.

Defeated; that's what he feels.

He has no other way around it, around her. He cannot crawl into her head or her heart to find her problems to fix. It will be a game of waiting until she talks to him. So he'll do what can do, say what she needs to know, and when the time will come, he will be there for her for whatever it is.

Nodding slowly despite her focus away from him, Hotch murmurs his answer, "Yeah… you can keep it…"

She lifts her head up, and like that, the smile in front of him grows. The water in her eyes has dissipated a touch he sees under the glow of the bulb, yet there remains the slight glassiness nevertheless. Carefully without elbowing him, Emily slips the tie around her slender neck. Holding both ends of it, he stares as her pupils shift from one end to another before she begins the process of tying it. He remains wordless, watching as her brain attempts to remember how it knots and her hands moves over and under.

In moments though, the knot appears looser than the ones he makes and crooked too. And the smile gracing her face he sees is sweet once she moves two steps back and tucks her hair behind her ear.

"What do you think?" The curious question hangs between them.

His white lined dress shirt hangs on her thin frame, the three middle buttons are the only ones put through a hole with the firebrick red tie that always bring her back to that night in Georgia, that holds more memories than she has told him is around her neck, along with the remaining wetness of her eyes and the beam she offers, he believes that beautiful cannot cover it.

Nothing can.

The distance disappears as he locks his lips to hers. Emily grabs onto the soft white cotton undershirt of his he wears by the shoulders. Her tongue little by little dances into his warm mouth. He tastes no different than that Georgia night when he had worn the tie.

Still wonderful and a taste she can never wash from her mouth.

Minutes tick away before she nudges him slightly backwards.

Not in the closet. She doesn't want it in there. But on his bed, surrounded by the sheets they had tangled earlier in and so many other times and where she can feel his entire body shielding her and sticking to her.

Their lips never break with their movement out the closet and across his bedroom. When the back of his legs hit the bed, he uses his muscle to turn them around. And slowly with their heads turning and their tongues wrestling, Hotch lays her down and climbs onto her. Her hands thread into his short hair. Emily kisses him with a touch more vigor, but with all the passion she has in her for him.

His hands roam, the callous yet tender touch traveling on her thighs. The edge of the lace she wears he fingers with for a brief second. Her legs though she folds up as her feet plant onto his bed. And beneath his weight and in the kiss, she does her very best to move up, trying to rest her head onto the pillows that have his lingering scent. But within her first attempt, his hands grasp her tiny waist under the shirt to aid her. The heels of her feet graze the back of his strong thighs while her tiny hands move down, finding the bottom of his shirt. Emily tugs at it and with one more forceful push of their lips together, she pulls away.

The need for oxygen is intense as the sounds of heavy gulps for air fill the room. And straddling above her and sitting himself up on the heels of his own feet, his chest rises too rapidly as he stares down into her. But with her head tilted gently to the side, a minute smile materializes in front of his eyes as she pulls on his shirt once more.

"Hey."

Hotch gets the hint and in one swift motion, the shirt is over his head. With the courtesy of the moonlight and the light that glows out still from his open closet, Emily shadows those nine scars on his torso. One thing he hates most about his body, himself, but it's the one of the many things she admires on him, of him because they are a part of him. Each spot of pink creased skin, he knows he doesn't have to hide from her, even when he very much wants to, because she has told him once when her attention had been on them.

"No matter what…"

And her lips had pressed to each one of them. No matter what, it hadn't, it doesn't change that she wanted him, wants him because what he looked like was only the bonus for the simple reason that what his heart was, was what made him so desirable.

He in turn tugs on the tie wrapped around her neck. She hums softly and bites her lips which have begun to swell, and he sees that it's his task to do. Unknotting it just like how she had done so with him their very first night. She breathes in deeply. Her hands settle on his thighs. His eyes never break from hers and he sees the desire, the passion, and the anticipation of what will happen next. Slowly his hand reaches for the top of the tie. However though, a mere half inch from having it in his fingers, Hotch shifts his hands down the five inches to those buttons that hide her curves.

While his thick fingers working leisurely on those three buttons and his gaze down to his job, in the back of her mind, Emily does her best to push the thoughts building in the back of her head away.

This last night, tonight, she wants to remember every single detail. She _needs_ to remember tonight for all the wrong reasons.

And she hopes he can remember tonight too.

Her eyes begin to sting.

With the last of the three buttons out from their little holes, he opens his dress shirt as the tie falls onto her flesh, the tails of it dropping right between her ample breasts. The firebrick red pops against her porcelain skin as her rosy colored nipples echo the shade. It's a beautiful combination. Hotch brings his hand to her skin, and with his index finger, he draws curves and lines under her breasts, around her nipples and across her stomach. She shivers under his teasing touch. Yet before he continues it anymore, she takes his hand into hers, and laces their fingers together.

They fit so well in so many aspects.

Emily brings his hands up, her mouth grazing across his knuckles. He watches for a moment before his body lowers and his head bends as his lips leaves feather kisses at the soft expose skin. Her gulps of air are shortened. He works around the tie. His journey moves down and across her stomach, his warm breaths fanning on the tiniest hairs on her body, and when his tongue stick out by the tip to go alongside the edge of her lace underwear, she whimpers.

He pulls his hand out from hers, and with both hands, raising himself up, he takes hold of the lace from both sides. Gently and little by little Hotch peels it down, his eyes taking up the new sight of her because each and every time he sees _her_, he is amazed. She feels her heart thumping too loud in her ears. Pass her thighs he moves the lace and once it reaches her knees, he shifts back as she lifts her long legs until he pulls it completely off of her and tosses them to the floor like what he had done hours prior. Above her he takes his place again while their eyes connect. But before a finger is upon her, Emily gives his boxer a gentle yank and nods against the pillow.

"Off."

And obliging to her soft and sweet command and one more yank a little tougher as her tongue emerges out to lick her lips, he pulls them down giving her the view of himself just like how she has given the view of herself already. At his age, near fifty, something she likes to tease him about every once in a while, he is still handsome to her.

Once he settles back over her, her fingertips glide against him.

Yet when she sees _him_, all of him, Emily thinks he looks beautiful.

The tiny jolts start up in his body from her touch. Her thumb brushes over the slit of him. On her face Hotch stares for a while, breathing heavy and watching her eyes study the most intimate part of him until she twists her eyes up. Without a word, her grazing halts as she edges back to spread herself for him. The view of blush pink heat is his picture when he glances down for just a minute, outlining her moist folds with the lightest sweep possible. She nearly yelps in response before his focus turns back up. One more nod is thrown towards him; she just wants to feel him in her, on her already. The eye contact of each other, with each other doesn't waver for a second as he lines himself up. And onto his bed sheets Emily clenches when each inch of him disappears into her.

What he does to her, how she takes him in and accommodates him so perfectly, she can't compare to anyone else. She doesn't even try because she knows it'll be useless. Only he has ever created the fire that forms slowly in the pit of her stomach before it travels to all the fibers of her being and flows through her veins even hours after it is all over and she lays in his arms.

She gasps loudly and raises herself slightly up, hoping he starts moving.

But he doesn't.

Every now and then, Hotch likes to stay in her and not move. Because even so without the friction and the sweat glistening on their bodies, the way she encases him so warmly from tip to base has the ability for him to simply release into her. He locates her hands instead and intertwines his with hers. And up above her head onto the pillow Hotch pins them down as he brings his face down to hers. Seven centimeters separate them from the complete contact of their face for minutes. She shuts her eyes. He feels her shallow breaths on his skin; she feels his scent assaulting her senses.

After these last eleven months, she knows she wants this with only him.

No one else will do.

Sealing those seven centimeters, he seizes her lips in his and pushes once into her. Emily gasps into his mouth. Another push into her, the grip of her hands on his firms a little. Then another and another and in a matter of a minute, Hotch begins to find a steady rhythm. Their lips break apart, but his eyes remain open, watching her face contort with pleasure.

"Faster…faster… faster…"

The single word that comes out three times in loud moans sends a chill down his spine as he does exactly what she wants. His pace quickens, the clasp of their hands tightens, and her legs rise as her ankles cross behind his lower back. Her back arches. She presses her hips to his and matches him thrust for thrust

"Oh… Emily… God…"

She's going to miss this.

"_Aaron…_"

The synchronization, the feeling of the contact of their bodies, the contact in the most intimate way of the human body, she doesn't want to lose any of it.

The passing thought, the feel of their bodies slapping against one another and through the beautiful melody of his grunts above and so near and hot her face as her moans and whimpers in between mix together, Emily feels the tears building behind her close eyelids.

_I'm so sorry._

"Faster…"

With several more thrusts into her, solid and quicker into her slickness, she tightens around him. Her short nails dig into the flesh of his hands. He is gasping for air; she lets out the low moans from the back of her throat. She squeezes him hard and immediately like each time they are together, it triggers his own reaction as he spills into her.

She wants to cry.

His hips slow and rock gently while she rotates her own, the want, need to have every drop of him in her, to have her coating every ridge of him. Slowly, her ankles uncross behind him as her legs drop down and open once more. Together, their hands remained joined while Hotch fully and warily covers her. She does her best to breathe in and out, waiting for the air in and out of her lungs to level out under their glued bodies.

Her insides are blazing.

The dress shirt she still wears, the tie around her neck and his body on her, every part of her is trapped by him.

It will hurt once their bodies pull apart. It will cut her heart in millions of pieces. And it will cut his too. In time, it will cut his too when he realizes what this night is about.

Her face is beautiful like this. Swollen red lips he makes out in the moonlight and dim glow slightly ajar, cheeks bright pink as her strands of thick bangs stick to her forehead, Hotch feels his heart tug.

Minutes pass before he watches her gaze opens to him. The water has come back. He sees them hanging on at the ends of her eyes and clumping a few of her long and curl lashes.

Disentangling her hands from his, his remain above her head with the ends of her hair tickling his skin. But hers she has brought to his face. Under the circles of his eyes, down the bridge of his nose, corner to corner of his lips to the areas where the tiny dents appear when he smiles at her, Emily embeds the feel of the all the details of his face.

"I love you..."

She has to tell him.

Hotch opens his mouth, ready to speak, ready to ask her again what is wrong, but she doesn't allow it because she doesn't want to hear that anymore.

"You know that, right?"

She wants to hear this. She _needs_ hear to this, the confirmation from his lips that he knows this.

His knowledge that she loves him because no matter what will happen to her, no matter what he will eventually learn all about her, loving him, falling in love with him is the truth and one thing she has not ever lied about.

He wants to help her.

Emily stares back, her fingers never halting around his face as her dark eyes with the faint spot of white in them by the lights surrounding them while the tears shine too vividly, awaiting his response.

"Yeah… I know."

And with this, a smile appears. It's a little sad, but most of all, it seems grateful.

But he can't unless she does so.

She lifts her head up slightly and catches his mouth in hers.

It's tender and sweet, and when she lingers onto his bottom lip for the extra seconds, Hotch feels, thinks that it almost feels final.

"Good… good…" she whispers along his mouth. "Good…"

He's still in her.

She slides one hand down between their bodies, finding where they connect. Her fingers stroke his flesh by the base, right through the tiny and fuzzy hairs. He tenses instantly.

One more time.

And two hours and seventeen minutes later, Emily is on her side. Her gaze is to the outside world, watching as the blends of pinks and orange begin to color the nook and crannies of her view. His arm is wrapped around her waist while his chest is on her back. Even in this position, she feels the subtle beats of his heart. The firebrick tie is loosely around her left hand that tucks under her cheek.

When the seventeenth minute changes into the eighteenth minute, and the sky gets the tiniest bit brighter, another tear drops from the corners of her eyes.

She hasn't slept.

Behind her when that teardrop hits the pillow, with his face just by the back of her head inhaling the scent of jasmine, he feels her slipping from him.

He hasn't slept either.

Hotch stays wide awake because when she turns around, if she turns around, she will see him. She will find that he is right there for her.

No matter what, he will be.

...

"_She had lost a lot of blood."_

He can't stop hearing those words.

"_We did all we could."_

He can't stop those words from following.

"_I'm sorry."_

In the Boston hospital waiting room on the fifth floor, all seven of them had sat anticipating the news, praying for the best.

Emily would be lucky.

The half inch hole right above her heart had not grazed anything major.

For the first four hours, Hotch hadn't sat. He hadn't looked at anyone of them in the face. He simply paced. Back and forth around the space all seven of them occupied and out to the nurses' desk every seventeen minutes, asking for new information only to hear once again that they couldn't give him anything. And when the third minute had ticked away after eleven on the silver clock that hung on the left side of the wall, Rossi had placed a gentle pat on his back.

"Just sit…"

So he had sat in the uncomfortable green chair facing the entry way. His elbows he had rested on his nearly trembling knees as his chin set against the heel of his clenching hand. His red eyes had been kept downcast on the floor. He had done his best to block out everything around him. Garcia's quiet cries, Morgan's sighs, JJ's sniffles and avoiding Rossi's concern stare at the shirt he had refused to take off.

The shirt with the red stains that begun darkening.

He had felt for her pulse. It had been so faint. Without a second thought he had lifted her thin and barely warm body into his arms. He had yelled at everyone in his path, screaming for the medics that should have been there already.

All the while he had thought about was the why.

Why she couldn't tell them, tell him. Why she felt the need to fight this battle alone because they would had fought by her side before he grasped that same reason he had yet to comprehend even after so many hours.

She had wanted to protect them.

Her only goal had been to keep them safe; and Hotch had wondered if she had known that they would had, he would had done the same for her.

They would have protected her. _He_ would have protected her.

And behind that then, he had thought of the man who had left her to die dusty, cold and alone on the cellar cement ground. The face of the man who had been part of her life for two years and ten months, he hadn't been able to erase from his brain.

The undercover stint that she had stepped forward willingly to do, knowing the dangerous position and closeness of him she would have had to endure. Spending everyday with him, finding her way to be part of his life, and after four months he had discovered she had done so. She had found herself to be a fixture for him.

More ways than being beside him on streets, Emily had become a fixture for him behind closed doors.

Hotch hadn't been able to stop the images from forming. He hadn't been able to block out the three letter name rolling off her tongue. In his many homes touching her, kissing her, in bed with her as she had moaned his name when he pushed into her, every minute passing had the thoughts and sounds growing more intense.

A past she had kept from him, a life he would have never known about perhaps if Doyle hadn't escaped.

She should have told him.

He shouldn't have had to find out nine minutes after giving the profile when the surveillance photos from the day of the arrest to discover her secrets. He had felt his heart pounding, wondering for the flash of a second that maybe it had not been her in that first photo. But one after another and another all he had seen and focus his pupils on had been her, dressed in white with the light brown hair in curls hauled away by her arms as the look of shock and fear etched in her face.

And when Hotch had looked around, her face missing from the crowd in the bullpen, he had done his best to not panic.

Morgan had yelled. She had been right behind him, standing there.

Garcia had dialed her number. Once, twice, then a third and a fourth and had the same results. She hadn't picked up. She wouldn't.

He had sent everyone searching each floor for her.

It had become a manhunt for her as if she had been a suspect in a crime.

But she had been found nowhere. Her car had been still in the parking lot.

Immediately he had sent Morgan to check her apartment. Nothing had been touched, but the safe in her bedroom had been opened. He had stopped himself from mentioning the family heirlooms and extra gun she had kept in there. But what had been recovered hadn't been that. It hadn't been what she had informed him about when he had asked her once. The only thing left inside had been the manila envelope containing the sheet of paper with her image and the many black marking except for 'Belgium', the identification pictures of three people and a passport.

A passport from eight years ago that had born her photo but not her name, his head had started working over and over within seconds when he had held the item in his hand.

"Lauren Reynolds."

That name had slipped out his mouth so softly when he had stared at it. But Reid had nearly shouted and jumped from his seat. He had heard her say that name weeks ago. She had died in a car accident. It was a friend of hers. And when Morgan had a closer look to the three photos of strangers, he had instantly recognized the woman.

The last victim they had had at the apartment complex.

Still he had done his best keeping his composure, his voice nothing but steady when he had picked up the phone and dialed the familiar number.

And when JJ had arrived an hour later, her tone determined and her steps quick while her fingers snapped at the people running around, Hotch had caught the pictures pinned onto the board. One place he never would have imagined her photo to be, one place he had never wanted it to be, he felt a part of him begin to crack.

He had wanted desperately to punch something, someone.

Talking to Clyde Easter had made him wanted to punch him.

A deal he had made with Doyle, they had discovered after the four hours in interrogation.

It had to be her or his family.

He had to give her up.

But out of him, they had found some information and connections that had led them to Boston.

Boston that had held memories of them had suddenly and rapidly become a nightmare for him.

For two days, Hotch didn't sleep. In his hotel room with forty different files sprawled out on his bed and the pictures of her scattered on the table, he had studied every minute detail over and over again. And in those forty eight hours when he hadn't been locked in his room while everyone else had a night of restless sleep, they had ran from the corners of the city and the additional hundred miles out. Every building they had searched and every alias that had belonged to the Irishman that he had used had been dissected.

That had been how they had found her in the cellar, her blood soaking her navy button down while the black color around her eyes and bruised nose and mouth had been covered in dried blood which had eventually brought them all to the hospital waiting room with his muscles stiff and his heart breaking with each beat.

And before he could take deep inhales to try to calm himself, Hotch finally had realized about that Wednesday night.

The night she had requested to come over. The kiss she had given him following the question she had asked him. The feeling he had gotten afterwards.

She had already made up her mind.

Emily was running; she had already begun. He had felt the anger at himself boiling in him and pumping through his veins whilst his heart had shattered as the familiar thought had crossed his mind once more.

She should have told him.

After five hours and twenty four minutes had passed, his head and imagination turning out of control, the doctor in the dark blue scrubs had delivered the news none of them had wanted to receive.

The cries from Garcia had grown louder. JJ had walked into the corner of the room and sobbed. Morgan had slammed his hand so hard against the wall the pictures shook. Reid had just sat down and put his head in his hands. Seaver had held onto the handful of tissues she hadn't let go since they had arrived. Rossi could only murmur the faintest words of gratitude and turn to the ground to hide his tears.

And Hotch had stood motionless.

His throat had begun to close. His breathing had turned difficult. His tired eyes clouded up. And every moment they had together flashed in his head.

He had felt the void immediately sinking into him.

"Can I see her?" He had hardly been able to choke out his appeal.

But it had been denied. It wouldn't be possible.

Her parents' request, they had been told that no one was to see their daughter's dead body.

His fingers run along the white bandage bound around his knuckles.

The following afternoon when he had returned home, the aimless slow saunter into his bathroom, his reflection had set him off.

He hadn't been able to stand looking at himself and the failure his life was, had become.

His fist had clashed into the mirror, the drops of red instantly dripping into his pristine white sink. Yet it hadn't hurt.

It still doesn't hurt.

He watches as the red numbers on the cable box change.

It is officially midnight.

Six days it has been now; nine days since Hotch had slept soundly because he can't sleep anymore.

He can't because when he does, all he sees is her face, hear her laugh, feel her body by his side with her limbs over him.

And he can't even stand going into his room. He can't stand to see his neatly made bed.

Since he was a child, he had made his bed each and every morning. His mother had taught him to do so; his father had enforced it daily.

And that Thursday morning, when Emily had turned in his arms to find him wide awake and staring at her, he had been met by her lightly swollen and glassy eyes. But she had still grinned at him, painful as it had been for her, she still had because the late night and early morning hours had been memories no one could take from her. Before she had backed away from him, ready to leave because she had not brought any clean clothes for work, she had ran her hand through his short black hair and pressed her lips to his.

Thirty one minutes later, his bed had been made.

After she had been gone, the firebrick red tie in her hand she had clutched, after he had showered and dressed and called to see if everything had been good with Jack for the night, Hotch made his bed like always. The tangled and ruffled sheets that they had rolled in, the pillows that had his scent and hers as well were pulled and straightened and fluffed just like he had done it for the ten thousandth time of his life.

But when he had nearly staggered into his bedroom, his bleeding hand messily bandaged, his eyes red with the sticky tears on his face as the glass remained covering his bathroom floor, he couldn't step further than the foot from the door.

He had pictured them in bed, together. Her on top of him with her hands pressed onto his bare chest as her hips rotated. Him covering her as he penetrated into her as her head threw back with her eyes closed. Them together as they simply enjoyed the comfort of one another in pacifying silence.

The pictures couldn't stop.

And Hotch had wished he never touched those sheets, or fluff those pillows, leaving them as they were, seeing the form she left when she was curled on her side and the slight indentation of her head.

"Daddy?"

The squeaky voice startles him as he turns to find Jack, the stuffed brown bear Haley had gotten for him when he had been two years old in his arms. A button eye has been missing after the first nine months in his possession, the thread on the right foot is coming loose and it needs a few stitches for the rip of his left arm.

Yet still, he hugs it every night.

Hotch runs his hand over his face, especially his eyes before scooting up as those little feet cross the one foot into his arms. Onto his lap and in his arms his son settles comfortably in.

"What are you doing up, buddy? It's late." His voice croaks.

He buries his nose into the head of blonde hair.

"I had a bad dream."

Jack lays his head on his shoulder.

"Well… it's okay… I'm right here." His throat is too dry.

He hears the sounds of the few cars passing by and the creaks from nowhere. But nevertheless it's quiet, almost deafening because he's hearing continuing cracks of him inside.

"Daddy… why are you sad?"

And right away Jack removes his head off of Hotch's shoulder, looking at him with wide eyes that resemble Haley's too much.

Even at age five, he's intuitive.

"No… I'm not sad."

Broken; he's broken, not sad.

"Then why are you crying?"

His innocent question pounds into his head.

He lost her too, that's why.

With one arm wrapped securely around his teddy bear's neck, Jack lifts his hand to stroke his father's cheek before puckering his mouth to it. Hotch gives him a small smile, the only one he has managed in a long while because despite the time and the nightmare that had him crawling out of bed in search for him, his son does the same to him. But he doesn't look at him for too long, shifting his eyes down to the fuzzy leg of the stuffed animal.

And for a while, sitting with Jack on his lap and in his arm as the little boy stares at him when he doesn't finger the white bandage around the cuts where the bad man had hurt him he liked to say, he feels like breaking down all over again. The tears down his cheeks that he has not allowed to fall since that night his fist had collided with the bathroom mirror want to tumble out again.

"Daddy?"

Hotch looks up. "Yeah, buddy?"

"Can we go see the dinosaurs again?"

His son puts out his bottom lip and tucks the bear underneath his chin.

One thing of the many things he had learned from her, this act had been taught on a Saturday afternoon when the three of them had been baking cookies. Something Emily had never known how to do, but had wanted a try at when she had heard through the grapevine that had been his son that he was the best baker in the world. So the first Saturday of December after two hours of baking the first batch of many holiday cookies for that month, he had denied them both of the hot chocolate chip and sugar cookies on the tray. But as soon as he had done so, he had been face with her and his son sticking out their bottom lips. He hadn't been able to say no then.

He can't say no now.

Lifting his hand to the back of his head, Hotch smoothes out the blonde hair and whispers, "Yeah… we can go."

His bottom lip is sucked back up as face lights up before he leans back into his father's chest.

"Can Emily come?" The broken pieces of his heart are stomped on over and over again.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

"She likes looking at them too, and she names them all funny."

There is a sweet giggle into his ears.

How will he tell him that she will not be back? That in four days at eleven in the morning, she will be lying in the mahogany colored coffin with the white silk lining her mother had picked out.

"Huh?" Jack tilts his head up. "Can she, Daddy?"

Hotch drops a kiss onto his forehead.

His eyes begin to burn. "I'm sorry, buddy…but she can't," he says softly.

"Why not?" There is the disappointment in his voice.

Swallowing hard, he knows he has no other option.

"You know how we fight the monster and we go on special trips?" Against his chest, Jack nods. "Well… there are these monsters that are far; far away Emily has to go fight. And she'll be gone for a really long time… so she can't come see us for a while."

"But why didn't _you_ go?" There is no delay to this question. And side to side he moves his little blonde head and speaks with delight. "Nobody beats Daddy. _You're_ a superhero." In the dim glow of the lamp, the grin directed up and to him is too cheerful and too confident and one he does not deserve.

His son will learn the truth one day that he is not. He can't protect the people around him; he can't save the people he loves.

"What 'bout her cat?"

The worried inquiry takes him out his thoughts. Jack sits up again, and turns around to face his father.

"Who's going to take care of Sergio?"

The name off his lips tugs on his withered insides. The same name he had suggested to Haley as she had sat on their bed with her stomach round.

Emily hadn't told him when she had gotten him. When the black feline had surprised him one night he had gone to pick her up, she had laughed and picked him up and nuzzled her nose into his black fur.

"I'd like you to meet Sergio," she had cooed.

He had arched an eyebrow at her before he had reached out to gently scratch behind the ear of the animal in her arms.

"You know…I suggested that same name to Haley when she was pregnant with Jack," he had murmured softly, his mind taking him back to that night.

Her eyes had widened as a chuckle had flee from her mouth. And after she had let Sergio back on the ground, she had tipped up and kissed him quickly.

"Great minds think alike, don't they?"

The smile she had given him, teasing and fun, in the moments following is still fresh in his head.

Every smile she has given him still is.

"I don't know." He regrets his answer, knowing fully how much he enjoys the black cat. Another kiss he bestows on his son's head as he brings him closer. "Let's get you back into bed, okay? It's getting late. I'll stay with you until you fall back asleep."

"Okay."

Hotch stands and Jack wraps his short arms around his neck, the stuffed toy closed to his chest. The half a minute walk to his room they make in silence, and he's grateful.

He can't answer another question. He doesn't want tell another lie.

All of it will blow up in his face.

Like everything else in his life, this will eventually too.

...

Emily doesn't beg.

Begging makes her feel weak. It leaves a disgusting taste of desperation in her mouth. It makes her look sad and pathetic. She doesn't like being any of those things. She doesn't like being seen in any of those categories.

That's why she doesn't beg. That's why she hates doing it.

Yet in the last nearly six weeks, she has been all of that and perhaps more even without begging.

So last night she had said fuck it. She had already lost it all. She had nothing left to lose.

Thus she asked for that favor from Sean.

Quickly though he had shaken his head with his sad eyes downcast because he loves her like a daughter sometimes and couldn't handle the sight of her like the way she had hated to be, hates being looked as. In his Scottish accent and his tone regretful, he told her it would be impossible. It would be too dangerous.

"_Please."_

Emily had told him. In the car when he had been there to whisk her away to safety after she had woken from surgery until everything would be setup, until they could find a way to get her out, she had turned to him and whispered dazedly with puffy eyes what she would be leaving, who she would be leaving. So she had begged with her eyes stinging uncontrollably until he reluctantly told her he'd try his best because she couldn't get on the plane without telling him, apologizing to him because everything in her had been eating her away inside.

And sitting in the tiny room with dirty white walls filled with equipment and tools at the farthest end of the private airstrip with two security guards by the door in the most deafening silence she can ever had imagined thirteen minutes after one in the morning, it continues to do so.

She feels numb and empty.

Her head hurts. She can't sleep unless she takes her medication. Her heart aches. She keeps thinking about them, about him. Her body throbs. She can't move to fast quite from that healing shot and the beating she had taken.

But Emily had put up a fight.

She had gotten her blows, but so had Doyle because she had refused to go down without one. With all the energy she had managed to muster from being tied up for so long, she had punched and kicked as hard as she could. He had a gun though. A gun he hadn't been able to refuse to use because underneath his words and the fist that had connected to her face, he had been so hurt by her.

His secrets he had whispered to her she had released with the sudden arrest. The confidence he had in her she had broken with her testimony. His heart he had given to her shattered when he had found out she wasn't who she had told him. That the woman he had been sharing his most private life and bed with had been nothing but the enemy.

And that what they had created in her just five weeks prior to that day he had lost everything and his life had ended hadn't died because of her, but because she had no control what her body did from her actions twenty years prior.

Doyle had wanted the confession to her act, that she had really taken away that life in her, that even if she had been his enemy, she had given him a part of herself. He had felt it. A liar she was, but that had been one thing he had been positive had to be the truth.

Yet there had been no confession from her.

Plain and simple, it had been a miscarriage because it really had been. But not so plain and simple through her gritted teeth and falsehood because she hadn't for one second wanted him to have the satisfaction of knowing what effect he had on her, she had told him he never held a single part of her.

His cold blue eyes had stared directly at her and hardly ten seconds had passed by before he had pulled the trigger, the pain she had caused him, attacking the last shield of dignity he had left shooting straight into her.

And he had left her there to rot, to die.

Just like how she had left him all those years ago, he returned the gesture without a second look behind him.

But she hadn't though.

She was in his arms, Sean had told her. Through the talks that went around and surrounded her, Emily had heard that he had been too impatient and angry to wait for the medics and had carried her more than halfway with her blood soaking into his clothes. She had held in all the sobs that had wanted to break free and compartmentalize whatever she had left in her. But once she had been left alone, in a room locked and windows bullet proof, one by one the sobs came out quietly into the pillow she held to her face.

Stopping had been difficult to do.

However each night that followed after each day of learning that going back would be impossible until Doyle would be caught with her assistance again, those sobs that had came out and couldn't be stopped before hadn't even formed. In bed she remained wide awake, thinking about all of them and wondering what would become of her if Doyle would never be caught, what would become of those people she loved and needed to protect.

Emily shifts in the uncomfortable plastic chair and glances quickly through her blurry eyes at her watch.

Half past one in this dreadful early morning at the moment, he should have been here already.

Or at least she hopes.

The plan is to leave at five to two.

Yet for her, the plan is the pathetic few minutes together for him to see, to feel, that she had been alright after all and for her to apologize for all she has been putting him through.

And soon enough the fearful thoughts begin racing in her head. If someone has discovered she isn't dead, if someone finds that he is coming and hurts him, Emily feels her pulse increasing and the air too thick to breathe in and runs her left hand through her hair and grips the fabric in her right hand so tightly her knuckles turn white.

She had gotten it back, that firebrick red tie that holds so many memories for her. Through all her belongings and personal items they had gone through, she had hidden the tie. In the back of her closet where hung the many little black dresses, she had stuffed it in the last dry cleaner's bag on the right side of her closet that had contained the red dress she had worn the first dinner he had taken her to. And last night when she had begged Sean for this moment she feels herself silently praying for, Emily had requested another small request.

"If they hadn't gone through my clothes… you should find it easily…"

In the morning she had woken up to it wrapped in white tissue paper. She had smiled sadly through her tears and brought the fabric to her nose.

It had his scent still.

But the news had been he wasn't home. He hadn't been in two days with an emergency case in Pittsburgh.

She had felt her heart sinking immediately, thinking of not seeing him, not apologizing to him before she is to step onto the plane to France because that is where she is to start. Then to the unknown, to the different cities and countries once again with the five member team they had set up to search for Doyle. Yet quietly she had thanked Sean before she had turned away and walked into the bathroom and slid down the door.

The thought of what will be of him in two days because at eleven in the morning is when he will see the closed mahogany coffin where she is supposed to be picked by her mother because real or not, she had whispered through tears she had never witnesses before down her cheeks, that everything will be the best for her, Emily doesn't want to draw.

Looking down at her watch again, she can hardly make out where the second hand is at. The only thing she can see is the thin black line turning too fast for her liking.

Stop time, she wishes she can do so more than ever now.

Bringing the firebrick red tie up to her nose, she controls the tears on the verge of falling.

It still smells of him now. Even after she had worn it that early Thursday morning as tiny beads of her sweat soaked into it, even if it has been days of being stuffed into that dry cleaner's bag with that red dress, that scent of something spicy he has seeps into the threads of the fabric.

At least she will have something of him with her.

The door to the tiny room is bit by bit pushed opened. Instantly Emily's head shoots up. She stands in a second. The sudden movement causes the pain in her body to rise. Her knees feel like jelly, ready to give up any moment. Her heartbeat increases. She feels her broken chest heaving underneath her black coat. And slowly Sean steps to the doorway, his gaze finding hers and from the distance all she can see is disappointment.

_No, no, no…_

Those tears build even quicker. One manages to roll down, but with the back of her hand she wipes it away. Yet another and another fall without delay and she bites the corner of her mouth, still feeling the healing cut that is on her lip.

She wants to scream. Her hand clenches around that one piece of something she will have of him. Opening her mouth, she hears nothing coming out.

Emily can't make herself say those three disheartening words in her head aloud.

With a sigh and a terse nod, Sean takes a small step in.

Behind him though, a shadow appears into her too hazy of a picture.

She shakes her head slowly.

And as Sean takes two steps forward, Emily finds herself settling her blurred vision on him.

Her throat constricts. She can't breath. Her heart is pushing against her ribcage. She can't move her feet.

And either can him.

Everyone had the same goal when they had received the case two days ago. Solve it as quickly as possible to make it back home for the funeral. So around the clock they had worked. And when they had finished shortly before nine, he had told everyone the jet was ready. No one had said a word or argued for a night of rest before leaving. They simply had followed him.

Fourteen minutes after midnight they had arrived back at the office. Behind him, everyone had started making their way back to their cars. But he had kept walking back to the building. And when he had pushed though the glass doors, he had felt four sets of concerned eyes on him.

His plan had been to find solace with his work.

Like so many times in his life before, it was to be his comfort.

For nearly half an hour, Hotch had. Sitting at his desk in the lowly lit desk lamp, he had read over the files, had signed the paperwork, doing his best to not wonder what would be occurring in two days at eleven in the morning. But a knock had come from his door. The man he had recognized from those three photos they had found.

Sean McAllister.

Yet he had not said a word of it as the man had put out his hand for him to shake and introduced himself to him. Her former Interpol boss, he had stated softly. He had been the one to tell her of Doyle's escape. Nevertheless, Hotch had been confused, his forehead furrowing too much as his tired eyes set on the man before his desk. It had been too late for introductions and condolences. It had been too late to talk about where to find her, how to save her. And frankly, he had not wanted to deal with any of it what had occurred in the past week and a half. In two days he would be dealing with more than enough. But still, his visitor had asked if they could talk, just for a few minutes. Then for the next thirteen minutes subsequently, what he had not known of her, what had never been recorded in those files he had read of her undercover stint, Hotch had heard about in a Scottish accent.

"It was my idea… that day at his Tuscan villa… it had been my idea for the surprise arrest. She hadn't known of it… another few months we were to keep it going, but I ended it. I wouldn't let it go any further."

"Why? Everything in the reports had recorded that she was getting everything you needed."

There had been no hesitation with his query. There had been no image short in his head how she had been acquiring it. He had felt the chill down his spine.

Sean had sighed quietly before continuing. "She had begun acting differently. And when she had talked of him, about him that last meeting we had had before I ended it, I knew it. She couldn't hide it from me. She had grown close to him. The one thing I hadn't needed to worry about her, she had done."

His world that had crashed so many days ago at the moment had risen up only to crash even further down.

"She had been angry… at me… for calling it off so soon. But I didn't care. I knew the dangerous position she was putting herself in. And what we had already gotten from her, we used it best we could. Everything was my call… and for her own good. That's why it had been so personal to Doyle… to go after her… for her to be his last victim…"

After that, he hadn't been able to say anything. Down at the open case file he had stared at, the letters turning into a bowl alphabet soup.

She had fallen for him.

Hotch had done his best to keep calm. And he had squeezed his damaged hand, swearing that blood would be seeping through the white bandages. Sean had cleared his throat then in the silence filling his office. Startled because he had forgotten there had been someone sitting across from him, he had nodded slowly and murmured, "Thank you."

For what; he had not known. Those thoughts from that night at the hospital had flooded back into his mind. And mixing with the new information, the pen in his hand had been so close to snapping in half.

"There is one more thing though…"

He had looked up, his head hadn't not stopped spinning. Something Emily had spoken to him about before she had disappeared, he had whispered. And all he had requested for him to do had been to follow him. He'd drive. But Hotch had been reluctant, his eyes narrowing at the man.

"A tie… dark red tie she had told me about…"

Those last few words had him following him down into his car almost immediately. The drive had been a quiet one. He could hear his thoughts, wondering where he would be going, and thinking that maybe in the last few days he had lost his mind for going along with someone who had turned his world upside down again with the shortest explanation possible. Out the window he had his stare at, reading the highway signs until twenty two minutes later he had begun to recognize a familiar road and names of the roads he had been on just a handful of times.

His mouth is too dry to speak. His breathing seems to have grown louder into his ears. His heart must have stopped pumping blood.

This is his imagination.

Some sort of dream or nightmare because of the lack of sleep. Yet through his unclear vision currently, he sees a head with the same shoulder length raven colored hair on a body that resembles the one he would cover and hold to him moving side to side.

"I'm sorry…"

Those two fragile words slice through him.

A mere two seconds it takes for their footsteps to close the eight and a half feet between them.

Her arms fly around his neck as his arms encircle her shoulders. His face he lowers to bury into the crook of her neck as her face she presses against the side of his face. Her heartbeat she feels stopping as his heartbeat he feels increasing.

All the while together, their muffled cries are heard by the three people walking out the door as their large tears are seep into one another's warm skin.

"I'm sorry… I'm _so_ sorry…"

Emily can't form any other phrase in her head, in her heart at the moment. She doesn't believe it will be possible.

But everything in him tells wants to tell her there is nothing to apologize for because in his arms she stands.

Alive.

"I'm _so_ sorry… I'm _so_ sorry…"

Hotch doesn't want to pull away, but he has to see her. Moving his hands up to cradle the back of her head, the teardrops flowing like a stream pass her bruised eyes and down her cheeks as she stares up at him with eyes filled with regret, he feels his heart clenched at. Through the water in her eyes, he looks older. His face has become more tired and too thin. The circles he has usually under his eyes have become too apparent. And before she can tell him those few words again, Hotch presses his mouth to hers, swallowing more of her cries. The kisses are sloppy and feverish and tastes salty from their falling tears as their heads turn and their noses crush alongside one another. She feels her knees wanting to give out at his taste and at those dozen kisses.

Against his lips, she does her best to hold in all the oncoming sobs. "I can't… I can't stay…"

It takes him a second to catch what she means. "Yes, you can. We will protect you." His breathing is labored. "_I_ will protect you."

His voice is stern and determined. It's just like him. Even in the worse of worse, his words are nothing but that, and it's one part she has admired and love. But at the moment as their hearts are shattering and her walls are doing their best to stay tall and strong for him and for herself, Emily wants to hate it.

But she cannot because it's him.

She fists the short black hair on his neck. "No… you can't… you can't…" He presses their foreheads together. Their stare never break. Her tears don't stop. "I can't risk you… any of you…"

Talking hurts too much.

"I love you…" Emily licks her lips as another sob snaps loose from her reigns. "I _need_ you to know that…"

Telling him this is killing her, him, and them.

"No…" He shakes his head. "No… this is _not_ the end…" A hand cups her face.

This is not supposed to give him hope. It is the last thing she wants him to have. It's the last thing she wants him to give her because she has none in her.

"Do you hear me?"

Her eyes close. The tears continue down too quickly and too hard. "No…" In his hold still, side to side her head moves. He can't think like that.

His tears he holds in now. "I want to grow old with you…"

Another heart wrenching sob she can't suppress with the biting of her trembling lips releases. "_Don't_…"

"Look at me."

She shakes her head fervently and continuously. Her arms unwrap from his neck as her hands slide down, grasping too tightly on his shirt. He has yet to see the firebrick tie she possesses.

This is a mistake he is making. "Aaron…"

The sound of his name in the broken voice through the cries rips through him. He chokes back his own cries.

"Emily…" The hand cradling her face tightens. The pain there doesn't compare to what she's putting them through though, what is going on inside their bodies. "Look at me…_ look at me…"_

And reluctantly she does and comes face to face with the sad curl of his lips.

She can't understand it. "_Please… don't…" _She can't handle it.

"I'm _going_ to grow old with you…." He is nothing but adamant with his words.

A thousand and one daggers Emily feels piercing through her as another sob rings in the room.

He can't think like that. She doesn't want to think like that.

"I lied to Jack…" The trembling of her lips increase. "I didn't tell him… I couldn't…" His mouth forms a terse line as he breathes in sharply. "He thinks you're coming back…" Once again her head moves from left to right. "He's taking care of Sergio… and he thinks that… that you'll be proud of him when you come back…"

A frail smile Hotch gives her, but all too quickly Emily leans up to catch his mouth, the image of his son with his wide smiles and pouting faces burning into through her heart and her brain. She brings her hands up to his face as the soft fabric is pressed beside his tear stained cheeks. Instantly both his limbs cover her, but he pulls their joined touch from his left cheek into his sight.

A blur of red he sees.

And for the first time of their last twelve minutes, Hotch can't stop himself with his fear come through and cutting her.

"I can't lose you _too_."

Her lungs have shut completely.

"Emily…"

Not yet, not yet, not yet. It can't be time yet.

The voice, the faint unmistakable footsteps they hear behind him, towards them while she presses herself closer to him and both his hands cup her face. More tears roll down and she wonders if they will ever stop for her after this moment.

"I love you…" Seizing his mouth once more, she kisses him hard. "I love you…"

It sounds too final. It feels too final.

And deep down, she thinks it is.

But he doesn't.

"No… this isn't goodbye…"

Hotch wipes quickly at those tears on her face.

"Aaron… please don't… _please don't_… _please don't_…"

Emily turns her eyes downcast and covers his hands with her own smaller ones, realizing the bandage against her face and under her touch. But questions she doesn't ask as she attempts her best with her missing energy to push them off.

The faster she leaves the better for the both them.

"Let me go…"

But he only holds on tighter. He forces her to look at him.

"We are _not_… saying it…. do you hear _me_?" His hands press into her cheeks as his fingers nearly dig into the back of her neck. "And I am _never_ letting you go…"

Crushing his mouth onto hers, her loud cries take flight as his insides die with each second.

This will not be the end.

"_This isn't goodbye._"

And finally, she gives him a nod in his hold of her. A smile through his teardrops and broken expression breaks out.

"Emily… we have to go…"

One more kiss Emily presses to his lips before his arms slither around her neck as her hands slide up his back. Hotch inhales too sharply; the scent of jasmine filtering into his nostrils. She buries her head into the crook of his neck, moisture he feels seeping into the pores of his skin. But before his hold firms even more than already so; she pulls her head back. His hand moves to her head of dark hair, his fingers threading through the sleekness of it. And with her eyes closed because she can't look at him anymore and her hand right with the tie around it above his heart, feeling the beats promptly dying, Emily pushes her shaking lips half a dozen times onto his right wet cheek.

"I love you, Aaron."

Yet his response, he cannot give because she doesn't allow it as Emily backs away and her feet move swiftly around him, her right hand holding that firebrick tie below her nose to quiet her loud cries with Sean right behind her.

Alone he stands in the room.

How long he stays motionless, Hotch doesn't know.

But alone in the room and motionless, he can still hears her cries. He can still hear their hearts shattering repeatedly. He can still feel her before him. He can still feel the tears rolling down his face.

He hears the plane.

The roaring engine starts.

He feels the solid ground beneath his feet quaver. He imagines the wheels slowly turning. He pictures her disappearing in the black sky.

And all while as the minutes tick away and the world moves on, Hotch can only think to himself that this cannot be their end.


End file.
